Workers' Socialist League - Failed Fusion

Failed Fusion

By 1980 the WSL was essentially working within the Labour Party which caused a degree of internal differentiation within its membership as to how to relate to the Labour Left around Tony Benn, which they saw as reformist. The presence of another Trotskyist group in the Labour Party, the International-Communist League, also posed problems and the possibility of the two groups merging was raised.

Those members of the WSL most opposed to any fusion of the group with the I-CL tended to be those involved with the group's "open" work around unemployment which was then a massive question in Britain. The WSL launched a short-lived National Unemployed Workers Movement at this time which despite its name was actually more concerned with unemployed youth than workers thrown out of the factories. The fusion of the two groups was achieved in July 1981 with the fused group maintaining the name Workers Socialist League, often called the 'new' WSL, with Socialist Organiser as its paper (although theoretically SO was a "broad" paper and not that of the WSL or I-CL before it). The WSL remained affiliated to the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, a small international tendency of groups led by the WSL. Its other affiliates were to be found in Denmark, Italy, Greece, the USA and among Turkish exiles. The only group affiliated which supported the former I-CL was to be found in Australia.

Within the new WSL disputes broke out immediately. Although there were many issues involved in the internal debates the Falklands War was paramount. Traditionally, Trotskyists defend countries oppressed by imperialism in any military conflict, calling this military support which is differentiated from political support. The reaction from some Trotskyists in Britain was to give such support to Argentina when war broke out, ignoring historical claims to the islands or the question of who began the war. The I-CL disagreed with this view and took a dual defeatist position on the war on the grounds that Argentina was not a semi-colony of imperialism, and also called for self determination for the Falkland Islanders. This position caused disputes within the group, mostly with members of the old WSL.

By the summer of 1982 clear but informal factional lines had developed in the WSL. One group was the former I-CL around Sean Matgamna, a second around Alan Clinton and a smaller third group was composed of part of the old WSL. Most of the parties in the TILC supported the third group, which in January 1983 constituted itself as the Internationalist Tendency (IT). The small IT group came to disagree with both the other groups on many important issues, including the Labour Party, Northern Ireland and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The IT had 38 members most from the old WSL but including I-CLers with its main support in Leicester and Nottingham. It was led by Mike Jones and Pete Flack.

In March 1983 the IT declared that it was now a faction, thus becoming the Internationalist Faction (IF), and it adopted a number of documents in which their criticisms of the leadership was stepped up. But there were by now tensions in the IF as some members became sympathetic to Workers Power and left to join that group. Others sympathised with the international tendency around the Workers' Party (Argentina), the Latin American Tendencia Cuarta Internacional (TCI). The next stage in the developing split was the April 1983 TILC meeting at which the WSL delegates voted to prevent Chilean sympathisers from affiliating to the TILC. The WSL then walked out after a resolution calling on Alan Thornett to fight Sean Matgamna's "revisionism". The IF, who sympathised with the TILC, were then expelled from the WSL, and formed the Workers Internationalist League.

The WSL was a little smaller after the expulsion of the IF and still split between the supporters of Sean Matgamna and Alan Thornett. Thornett's supporters stopped paying subscriptions to the group and called several special conferences. Later, in 1984, Matgamna's supporters formally expelled Thornett's supporters.